Lack of Privacy Regulations in the Fitness and Health Mobile App Industry: Assessing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for Meeting the Needs of User Data Collection
By Jacqueline Bui
Imagine a visit to your favorite breakfast restaurant, and just as you catch sight of your beloved bacon, eggs, and toast special at
another table, there is a notification from your phone and an application chastising you to eat healthy for the week and avoid empty carbohydrates. That degree of guidance and coaching (or micromanagement and meddling, depending on the user’s mood), is a present-day reality, all made possible through the miniaturized personal computers most of us carry around in the form of a smartphone. Lark is a health and fitness mobile application or app, designed to motivate users by tracking their diet, exercise, and sleep schedule.’ Although users find Lark to be helpful in improving their well-being, these apps also collect more than your information.
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The Abyss from which There Is No Return: The Third Amendment Precludes NSA’s Section 215 Program
By Erich Snow
The conversation about the government’s role in the nation’s security changed overnight after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s (NSA) dragnet surveillance program
under section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. Conversations about the legality of government intrusions into our private lives, coupled with the budding realization of what was no longer private, led to a fundamental shift in our understanding of the relationship between the government and private life. In the wake of the Mossack Fonesca Panama Papers leak, Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists Snowden contacted, pointed out that these seemingly-illegal programs were arguably justified by a legal framework. Like the practices exposed by the Panama Papers, the section 215 bulk surveillance program that Snowden exposed was “legal,” inasmuch as its proponents claimed to be following a statute. Whether or not that is true, the 215 program is impermissible under the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
